Light-transmitting insulating structural sandwich panels have been successfully used as decorative and functional walls and roofs of building structures for some years, as embodied, for example, in previous patents and products of Kalwall Corporation, also the assignee of the present application, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,642,949 and 4,774,790.
Through selection of surfacing effects and of colors and tints of the face sheet materials and/or the generally fiber or the spun glass insulation fillers for such panels, attractive light-transmitting appearances have been created and tailored to the cutomer requirements in degree of light opacity or transmission.
Such constructions, however, have heretofore been restricted to walls and ceilings or roofs of planar or flat surfaces, though some three-dimensional or corner effects were obtainable by orienting panel sections at angles to one another.
It has now been surprisingly discovered that, despite the flat planar nature of such structural panels, an illusion that the panel surfaces are actually three-dimensional--and, in particular, can appear as a three-dimensional repeating or periodic block structure, such as, for example, zig-zag steps--can be created through a combination of a novel internal construction that permits of a periodic variation in light-transmission color, tint and/or dying of alternate block shapes provided throughout the panel.
This, moreover, has been found to be far more realistic than attempts of an artist to give an impression of three-dimensional steps or other patterns as by painting or decorating on the outer panel sheets; or other prior attempts at decorative architectural panels as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,193,434 wherein a panel is formed of thermoplastic sheet material to produce a pleasing three-dimensional effect; U.S. Pat. No. 2,210,806 wherein a three-dimensional effect is produced by spaced image intercepting elements placed in different planes; U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,940,896 and 4,877,308 employing a glare screen comprising a plurality of angularly offset louvers sandwiched between inner and outer transparent plastic sheets; and other panel structures some having zig-zag members as in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,516,197; 4,471,596; 3,038,278 and 3,568,387.
Further unlike any of these different prior approaches, the present invention produces an additional illusionary effect when multiple panels of the invention are mounted side-by-side, synergistically producing novel and striking cornering effects with, say, horizontal mounting, and columnar effects with vertical mounting.
The methodology of construction, moreover, enables wide variation of block patterns and the customizing of color and contrasting effects in degree of light transmission and appearance to suit preferences of customers.